Businesses today frequently enter into service agreements for the support of a variety of different items. Such service agreements may relate to the support of hardware (e.g., a router) and/or software (e.g., an enterprise application). Additionally, some service agreements may be multi-level service agreements involving multiple parties. For instance, such a multi-level service agreement could specify various responsibilities and obligations for each of the parties to the agreement. For example, a particular business could enter into a multi-level service agreement for the service of a specific router with a first partner who provides first level support for the router, and additionally with a vendor who provides second level support for the router and to which a service request can be escalated.
While a multi-level service agreement for a single item between only a few parties may be relatively simple to manage, a multi-level service agreement can become quite complex when a substantial number of parties and supported items are involved. For example, a multi-level service agreement for an enterprise application could include provisions for the support of the enterprise application itself, provisions for the support of the hardware on which the enterprise application runs, provisions for the support of the network over which the enterprise application communicates, and so on, with the support of each different item assigned to one or more parties. In such an example, it may be important for the various parties to communicate with one another in attempting to resolve an issue, as dependencies could exist between the various items. For instance, a problem with the hardware on which the enterprise application runs could also create problems for the enterprise application itself. However, managing these communications for a complex service agreement can quickly become a challenge, as each of the parties involved may use a different ticketing system, each with a different communications protocol.